WOODBURNERS
WE RECOMMEND

ONLY
THE NAKED SHALL FLY
George Evans

Based on what was initially
announced regarding the August 10, 2006 terrorist plot exposé,
we were encouraged to believe that twenty four Einstein-like
Middle Eastern types (17 years old and up) from Pakistan-a country
we are not yet at war with-were arrested in England and Pakistan
while in the midst of launching an attempt to carry off plans
so esoteric, complex, and brilliant that Homeland Security Secretary
Michael Chertoff declined to say (on the day of the announcement)
exactly what they were planning. In general it had to do with
smuggling various liquids onto US-bound airplanes so they could
blow them out of the sky over the Atlantic or over unnamed cities.
But what lethal concoction of water, make-up, toothpaste, cafe
latte, peroxide, shampoo, and lip balm they planned to mix and
arm via iPods, cell phones and laptops was left to the imagination.
Whatever their methodology, Mr. Chertoff decided it was better
kept from the public, for our own good no doubt, in an era when
one can easily find (so I've read) blueprints and operating manuals
for nuclear weapons on the internet. In the meantime, airline
passengers all over the world, but especially in Britain and
the US, were being stripped of their possessions, their dignity
(at least what remains of dignity in airports), and any sense
of well-being they managed to muster in order to fly at all during
these horrific times.

Am I wrong, or did
I actually hear, in Chertoff, the voice of someone so fearful
of the American public that he thought we might do the same thing
if he told us how the terrorists planned to succeed? "No,
no," reasonably couched voices might respond, "the
discretion, the secrecy, is not because of you, good citizen,
but for the sake of terrorists who might be listening. It's them
we do not wish to inform."

That attitude is not
only ridiculous but melodramatically avuncular, insulting, and
dangerous. It's high time someone informed the unelected minions
of the Bush administration-which includes Mr. Bush himself-that
terrorists already know what they need to know (if they don't,
they can easily find it on the internet, or by text messaging
their nefarious colleagues), and not only is the general American
public not a mob of copycat terrorists itching to use such information
to blow up their own planes, its government's employees do not
have the constitutional right, responsibility, or permission
to conceal (at any time) details about anyone planning to murder
them. And it is not a conundrum to wish for the truth of homicidal
methodology while wishing to conceal knowledge of it from one's
potential murderers. It is merely a symptom of the times, during
which we must prepare ourselves for a future (as British novelist
Martin Amis suggested in a recent interview) in which we will
need to learn to bear a tolerable degree of terrorism in our
daily lives, because it is not going away. But neither are the
causes of it, nor the type of hysteria perpetuating its effectiveness.

In this most recent
blur of non-information, we are not witnessing an exercise of
caution by those who know better ("knowing better"
is an argument best confined, if used at all, to parents with
young children rather than government officials), nor are we
witnessing the expressed convictions of anyone who has our best
interests at heart. We are witnessing the machinations of control
freaks and political manipulators who not only believe the public
is better off in the dark, but might (just might) have a corporate
interest in giving the airline industry further license to raise
ticket prices and begin charging exorbitant, quadruple gas-price-level
rates for bottled water, henceforth forbidden to be carried onto
airplanes by passengers. Did someone suddenly see an opening
for a little profit? And am I suggesting that airlines would
exploit patrons in the shadow of tragedy, or that the US government
would exploit its citizens via the drama of terrorist plots and
tragedies?

Of course I am, because
of course they do. They have a solid track record.

The air traveling public,
after five years of abuse by the airline industry (beginning
9/11), and the general public, after six years of incompetent
paranoiac caterwauling and warmongering by the unelected Bush
administration, have a responsibility to be not only skeptical
but borderline dismissive of anything any one of them claims,
proclaims, declares, or decants.

Otherwise, on the airline
front we will retain only the right to be strip-searched and
marched naked through airport detection machines holding our
belongings aloft in transparent plastic bags (brutalized and
insulted, as usual, by angry, underpaid, ill-trained security
personnel who may themselves never be able to afford airplane
tickets to anywhere), and on the government front will have only
the right to be stripped of all ostensible rights so that the
juggernaut of an obviously pending Evangelical-Fascist dictatorship
can finally take over full throttle.

One clichéd
response to the likes of the funereal Mr. Chertoff and his ilk
(the non-elected three Rs: Rove, Rice and Rumsfeld) might be
to complain that, in the end, even appointed government officials
work, in theory, for the public (not for lobbyists, corporations,
or the soap selling media that can't discern any important difference
between a Federal mouthpiece and an animated toilet bowl character),
and as employers, we have the right to know, theoretically, what's
going on in the front office, especially at the exact moment
any events unfolding there threaten our lives, if indeed they
do threaten our lives. I prefer to make the decision about whether
or not to board an airplane on any given day on my own, and do
not wish to defer that decision (which may determine the remaining
length of my life) to the likes of a stuffed shirt at a podium
or dry drunk president at a pulpit. Thank you.

If in fact, as British
authorities claim, this latest terrorist event has been under
investigation for months, why not at least alert us on the level
of being frank, if not discreet, about needing to adjust the
rules of travel, and allow travelers the personal choice of either
risking their lives on airplanes or not? Or, on the other hand,
since nothing had actually happened yet, why make the announcement
when it was made? Why that particular moment? Could it possibly
have political ramifications? Is it yet another political smoke
screen of the sort we've grown to expect? And in light of the
hard-earned mistrust we have for our highest government officials
(after a half decade of being subjected to their dark foibles),
who among us can afford to be magnanimous enough with their lives
and personal freedoms to trust them to the likes of Mr. Chertoff
(a.k.a. the neo-con Bush administration), the morally bankrupt
British Tony Blair government (from whence this conspiracy sprung),
or the airline industry itself (which cares nothing about anyone-its
employees included-or about anything except its profit margin?
Who are they to decide our mortal fate? And who are we to be
foolish enough to permit it?

In fact, Americans
(of the US sort) do not really wish to be treated like employers
by their elected (and non-elected) representatives, and don't
want to act like employers either; they simply want to be treated
like adults. They want to be told the truth, and want their government's
officials to exude a sense of reasonable confidence that they
can handle the truth because they are neither idiots nor terrorists.

We're all dumbed-down
to some degree these days (who wouldn't be after being condescended
to like nursery inmates in the five years since 9/11)-numbed
is a more appropriate description-but we deserve better than
the lame, paranoid prime time interview or press conference blather
we get, canned events that are no more than soap opera arias
peppered with crypto-jargon (terms like "asymmetrical warfare")
which everyone comes away from feeling less informed than they
were, and even dizzy with deepened ignorance.

As for why this latest
government-TV media overkill circus event might be happening
at this particular moment, just look around: our government's
US war in Iraq is lost; our government's US war in Afghanistan
is slipping out of control and the Taliban are ascendant; our
government's Middle Eastern ally Israel is butchering innocent
people on a large scale right out in the open (with our government's
consent, support, and encouragement); and (surprise, surprise)
it turns out (on the morale front) that our government's "professional,
all volunteer military" (perpetual motion machine of the
unacknowledged backdoor poverty draft) is laced with rapists
and murderers. Not only that, but the American public (if it
cares to look) finally has proof (in recently declassified Army
files) that civilian massacres by US troops during our government's
US-Viet Nam War, were not at all uncommon (as many of us have
long known), which leads us to believe they are not at all uncommon
now.

To top everything off,
anyone paying attention knew that the results of the Joe Lieberman-Ned
Lamont primary election in Connecticut (held two days before
the London bomb plot was trotted out) was of profound importance
to the Bush administration and Republican dominated Congress.
Avid poll watchers could have predicted some type of a backlash
in the event of a Lieberman loss, but is it possible that the
sanctimonious, self-serving Lieberman's defeat (harbinger of
neo-con demise that it was) sparked this latest madness?

Of course it is. First
word of the London terrorist plot came twenty four hours after
his defeat was announced, at a time when moderate progressives
(those still buoyed by the notion that there is even a splinter
of difference between current Democrat and Republican office
holders) were celebrating a rare moment of ostensible success.

Once the Republican
administration safely had its faux Liberal "Independent"
Republican candidate in up-for-grabs Connecticut (where Bush
II's Republican granddaddy, Prescott Bush, son of an arms dealer,
was first elected to the US Senate in the 1950s), it could only
be expected that they would fabricate a means of changing the
subject from their stealth candidate's defeat, thus diminishing
his negativity factors as well as the importance of the message
delivered by his anti-war, anti-administration (not anti-American),
electorally legitimate and victorious opponent.

Two days after that
election, on Thursday, day of the London plot announcement, Vice
President Dick Cheney attacked the Democrats as weak on terror,
and used the Lieberman defeat as proof. Also that day, Joe Lieberman
himself, loyal Democrat reconstituted as an independent, resumed
running for re-election as if nothing had happened to him. Smugly
staging his first post-primary campaign stop in Waterbury, Connecticut,
where he won big the night before, he seized on the terrorist
plot in Britain as an argument for his brand of thinking, while
beating the usual war drums and beaming like a fresh plucked
flower.

While on a trip this
past June, I sat in a hotel room one morning and watched a sneering
press conference held by US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales
to announce yet another earth shaking terrorist plot in which
the plotters planned to blow up the Sears Tower in Chicago, conduct
a ground war against the US, "kill all the devils"
they could, and create a scenario "as good or greater than
9/11."

The mainstream media
had jumped the gun and mistakenly reported that the plotters
were African Americans from the Nation of Islam, then changed
their minds, then didn't, and until the national confusion got
sorted out at the press conference, no one knew exactly who the
terrorists were, except that they were black and either al-Qa'ida
or trying to join the ranks of al-Qa'ida.

The clarifying Gonzales
press conference was like a Fellini scene: Gonzales holding forth,
smirking, sweaty, and contradicting the hapless honesty of his
confrere, F.B.I. deputy director John S. Pistole (with his ominous
last name), while the reporters squealed and gagged for information
like a nest of robin chicks. The occasional camera pan revealed
looks of genuine concern that slowly slid towards incredulity
as details of the plot emerged, or, rather, failed to emerge-credible
details, that is. In the end, the plotting terrorists turned
out to be a crew of seven luckless, unemployed men with militia-like
aspirations who were set up by an undercover FBI agent posing
as an al-Qa'ida operative. They were not Muslims of any sort,
did not possess any weapons or explosives, and, it seems, agreed
to the Sears Tower as a target only after it was suggested to
them by the undercover agent, who took their "al-Qai'da"
oath, along with their shoe sizes, afterwards rewarding them
with some boots, which they supposedly requested from his al-Qa'ida
majesty, along with uniforms, guns, vehicles, money, a camera
to photograph potential targets, and bullet-proof vests (which
they certainly would have needed in their ground war).

If you check the news
you'll discover things were not going well for the Bush-Cheney
administration that week either. As suddenly as it appeared,
the Sears Tower plot vanished from view, but it had served its
purpose: changing the subject in our attention deficit society.
Twenty-four hours into this latest plot (the Transatlantic Water
Bottle Cabal)-which I reserve the right to revisit if it turns
out to be true or genuine-it was already slipping from the headlines.

The next new airport
announcement a traveler hears, might go something like this:
"Your attention please. All passengers on Flight X to X
city, remove your clothing and line up to board the aircraft."
As for the rest of us, until our own time comes, fellow citizens
and fellow residents (legal or illegal) alike, it would not hurt
to mull the words of our great 19th Century poet Walt Whitman,
who sent us a message from the past:

To the States
or any one of them, or any city of the States, Resist much,
obey
little,
Once unquestioning obedience, once fully enslaved,
Once fully enslaved, no nation, state, city of this earth, ever
afterward
resumes
its liberty.